Between The Eers: Eilert Will Get His Interview
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Good Monday morning, everybody.
00:11 Skyler Callan here on Between the Years, Mountaineers Now.
00:14 Thank you for tuning in to another episode.
00:17 Today, we're gonna take a small little break from football.
00:19 We've talked a lot about football here recently
00:21 for a lot of reasons.
00:23 Signing day, the bowl game, the season,
00:26 transfer portal stuff.
00:28 We're gonna dive into a little basketball today
00:31 and then potentially get back
00:32 in some more football stuff tomorrow.
00:34 But my mailbag, which I do every single week
00:38 on Mountaineers Now,
00:39 for the last three to four weeks has been dominated
00:46 by transfer portal questions
00:49 and stuff to do with the football team.
00:52 For the first time, arguably probably in about a year,
00:58 it was about basketball.
01:03 And I understand why, but the 89 to 55,
01:08 I think that was the score.
01:11 I know it was a lot, a lot to a little basically,
01:14 but the blowout loss to Houston.
01:19 Everyone is starting to jump the gun a little bit
01:25 and get into what Ren Baker should do
01:29 at the end of the season with Josh Eilert
01:32 in the head coaching search.
01:34 And several of the questions that I had
01:39 were in regards to hiring somebody else
01:43 or how quickly he'll tell Eilert,
01:47 "Thank you, but we're moving on."
01:52 And I felt like I was kind of being very repetitive
01:57 in my answers, but I'm just being honest with you.
01:59 Like, look, this situation that Josh Eilert is in
02:04 is no different than the one that he was in two weeks ago
02:07 or a month ago, two months ago,
02:10 or when he first took the job.
02:11 This is still a messy situation
02:16 that he is having to navigate.
02:19 He's still without Jesse Edwards.
02:21 And even when he gets Jesse Edwards back,
02:24 it's going to be a little bit of time
02:27 for them to get reacclimated, gain that chemistry,
02:30 because that'll be the first time
02:31 unless something else happens between now and then
02:34 where he's got the full boat.
02:36 So I don't know that you can really expect
02:42 much out of this team.
02:42 They're five and nine.
02:44 And going back into the off season,
02:48 I understood the high level talents of Kirk Resa,
02:53 of Noah Farrakhan,
02:55 even though we didn't think he was ever going to play,
02:58 Jesse Edwards, and Rayquan Battle,
03:04 but I didn't see this as a tournament team.
03:09 There's not enough depth.
03:11 There's too many new faces.
03:14 And unless you're the Dukes or the Carolinas
03:18 or the Kansases of the world,
03:20 you're not going to have a whole lot of success
03:22 when you have such a big turnover in your roster,
03:26 where you just bring in five-star guys
03:29 like they grow out in trees.
03:32 That's not the case with these guys.
03:35 And that's no disrespect to Kirk Resa, Jesse Edwards,
03:39 or any of these guys that they brought in.
03:41 The problem is the depth, in my opinion.
03:47 You don't have depth.
03:48 You don't have bigs.
03:50 And if you don't have any chance
03:53 of being competitive on the glass,
03:55 you're going to have a hard time in this league.
03:59 And that's why it's hard for me to sit here
04:01 when I'm looking at the schedule and I'm like,
04:03 man, are they going to win a game in the conference?
04:08 And I'm not being crazy when I say that.
04:14 It is hard for me to find a game on this Big 12 schedule
04:18 that I look at and go, you know what?
04:21 Yeah, that's definitely where
04:22 they could potentially turn it around.
04:25 They're going to win some games.
04:27 They're not going to go 0-18 in the conference.
04:30 But it's hard to figure out where that's going to happen.
04:35 Again, even when Edwards comes back.
04:39 So I don't want to go deep, deep into this season per se.
04:43 I just wanted to lay that out there
04:45 that this is still a very tough situation that he is in.
04:49 And I mean, he put this roster together in the summer,
04:54 way, way, way, way after the season ended,
04:58 way, way, way, way after all the top portal guys
05:02 had already found new homes.
05:04 I mean, he plucked a kid from Israel,
05:06 an 18-year-old kid from Israel,
05:09 and another kid that hasn't played in Ali Raghab
05:13 to be essentially just another body, you know,
05:16 for Jesse to go up against in practice.
05:18 People forget these things.
05:21 And I'm not making excuses for Josh,
05:24 because what they look like on Saturday,
05:27 I mean, that's unacceptable.
05:28 I mean, they did not play well at all.
05:30 They didn't make adjustments.
05:32 It just kind of felt like they were accepting the loss.
05:36 That's not what you want to have.
05:38 You got to have that fight.
05:39 However, you're playing the number three team
05:42 in the country.
05:43 It's their first ever Big 12 Conference game.
05:45 You're playing at their place.
05:47 It's kind of forgiving, right?
05:51 I don't think that's going to be something
05:53 that we're going to see in these final 17 games.
05:57 We're going to see some toughness.
05:59 We're going to see some grittiness.
06:01 This team's going to win a couple of games.
06:03 Are they going to turn it around
06:05 and make the NCAA tournament,
06:07 or even the NIT for that matter?
06:08 Eh, I don't know.
06:09 We'll see.
06:11 I'm skeptical on that.
06:13 But I'm not ready to just put all the blame on Josh Eilert
06:17 and say he's not a head coach.
06:19 I'm not ready to say it's time for Ren
06:23 to just start diving deep into his list
06:25 that he's got in his drawer
06:27 and start really doing a deep dive on this coaching search.
06:32 That's not going to happen.
06:33 Ren Baker has promised Josh Eilert
06:35 since the beginning of this whole thing
06:39 that he's going to be respectful to him and the process.
06:43 He's going to let the season play out, as he should.
06:45 You know, this is an interim job,
06:49 and until the end of the season,
06:52 especially given the situation,
06:57 it's hard for anyone to have a fair chance in this thing.
07:02 So, I mean, that would be like
07:05 cheating on your girlfriend, essentially.
07:07 Say, "Yeah, we'll date for a year,
07:09 "but during that time, I'm going to still be swiping
07:11 "left and right on Tinder to see what I like."
07:14 No, that's not how this thing works.
07:17 You've committed to this guy for a year.
07:20 You're staying with him for a year.
07:22 There's a specific date in which he stops becoming,
07:26 he stops being your interim head coach.
07:29 At that very date, then you can reassess things.
07:32 And I understand there's going to be
07:35 all these big-time names out there.
07:38 Dusty May at Florida Atlantic was somebody
07:40 that kept popping up in my mailbag.
07:41 And look, I think Dusty May's a good basketball coach.
07:44 I think he's going to be a very good power,
07:47 not power forward, talking football here,
07:50 high major basketball coach at some point,
07:53 if he chooses to make that leap.
07:55 But this is a guy that has lost to Charlotte,
08:00 Florida Gulf Coast, Bryant, this season.
08:05 This season.
08:07 It was a top 10 team that's lost to teams like that,
08:12 that have lost seven and eight and nine games.
08:15 Let's slow the boat there.
08:20 I don't know if Dusty May is,
08:22 he probably should have took a job last year.
08:27 I understand he had a lot of talent coming back
08:29 on that Final 14, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.
08:31 I'm not going to get down that road.
08:33 But there's going to be other names.
08:36 There's going to be more high-profile names out there
08:39 that get thrown into the mix
08:40 that'll probably be considered for the job,
08:42 have interest in the job.
08:44 In all reality, it's going to be hard for Josh Adler,
08:47 I believe, to keep this job full-time,
08:51 regardless of the record,
08:52 regardless of how they've looked so far.
08:57 I'm not saying that Josh Adler is unfit to be a head coach.
09:02 And really, to me, this is very reminiscent
09:07 of what's going on in Charlotte with the Hornets.
09:11 As you know, I cover them as well.
09:13 Steve Clifford came in to inherit a mess, okay?
09:19 He was the head coach in Charlotte.
09:22 He got fired.
09:23 They bring in James Borrego for four years.
09:25 He does a really good job,
09:27 but they felt like they were ready to take the next step,
09:31 so they let Borrego.
09:33 Kenny Atkinson was agreed to come in to be the head coach.
09:38 Then all of a sudden, Kenny Atkinson said,
09:39 "Ah, you know what?
09:40 I like this Golden State gig,
09:42 and I'll stay here as an assistant to Steve Kerr."
09:46 And all of a sudden, the Hornets go several weeks,
09:52 and they don't have a head coach.
09:55 They go into the NBA draft without a head coach,
09:59 which is unheard of.
10:01 And then the Miles Bridges situation happens.
10:06 Off the court, you bring in Clifford.
10:10 You have Lamello Ball get hurt.
10:12 Cody Martin's still hurt.
10:13 There's so many injuries
10:15 that this team goes through last year,
10:17 and they just dealt with one thing after another.
10:20 And it was very similar to this thing with Josh Eilert.
10:26 They never had a chance to be successful last year.
10:29 Fast forward to this year, and it's the same things.
10:32 Maybe not quite the off-the-court situations,
10:36 but you still have a ton of injuries,
10:38 still with Lamello Ball,
10:40 other guys that are very important to that lineup.
10:43 And again, Clifford's in the last year
10:48 of his guaranteed contract.
10:50 He's got two years guaranteed, a third-year club option
10:53 with new ownership in.
10:54 It's like, eh, I find it hard to imagine.
10:59 I find it hard that he's going to get that club option
11:02 for that third year.
11:04 And it's kind of unfair because he really hasn't had a chance.
11:07 He hasn't had a healthy roster.
11:09 He hasn't had a good situation.
11:10 Go to Josh Eilert. It's kind of the same thing, right?
11:14 He doesn't have a healthy roster
11:16 for the most part of the beginning part of the season.
11:18 Where are they playing these non-conference bye games?
11:21 And there's off-the-court situations happening.
11:23 There's injuries. There's all this drama that comes on.
11:27 And it's kind of unfair, but you have a new AD,
11:33 similar to the situation in short,
11:35 when you have new ownership.
11:36 And he's probably going to want his guys,
11:39 he's going to want to go in a direction
11:40 where he knows somebody from his past connections
11:44 or somebody that he feels that can take this thing
11:46 to the next level or get them back on track
11:48 where you're not running another trial run
11:51 on a young head coach who may or may not be ready
11:55 for this type of a job.
11:57 It's a hard situation to be in for Josh Eilert.
12:02 But again, I will say,
12:03 Josh Eilert will get his opportunity
12:07 to be the head coach full-time at the end of the season.
12:12 He will get an interview assuming he still wants one,
12:17 which I'm assuming that is the case.
12:19 So don't just write him off as he's gone
12:24 after the end of this year.
12:28 They're moving in another direction.
12:29 They're going to go get Dusty May.
12:30 They're going to go get Steve Forbes.
12:32 They're going to go get whoever.
12:35 That's probably the direction they're going in.
12:38 So don't get me wrong there.
12:39 Don't read me in the wrong way here.
12:41 I do think they'll probably end up going
12:44 with an outside coach.
12:48 But Josh Eilert will get his chance
12:51 at Grenbaker's desk to make his pitch.
12:54 And I mean, again, regardless of the record,
12:59 he has gone through literally anything imaginable
13:04 and then some.
13:05 So I think the way he's handled everything,
13:12 the way the team still plays outside of Saturday,
13:16 they're playing hard.
13:18 They seem to be playing, not necessarily for him,
13:21 but they're playing hard for him.
13:22 They're playing together.
13:25 It's a hard, hard situation, I feel for Josh.
13:31 But he's got 17 games to kind of prove
13:37 that he can be the guy.
13:38 He doesn't have to go eight and nine.
13:39 He doesn't have to go seven and 10 to prove,
13:43 okay, I'm the guy,
13:43 but they've got to show some signs of progress.
13:47 And I think it's way too early to write him off.
13:50 Again, even though I think they'll go
13:52 in a different direction,
13:53 it's one game at the beginning of January at Houston,
13:59 one of the top teams in the country
14:00 that could win the national championship.
14:02 You got blown out by third.
14:04 It's going to happen.
14:06 It's going to happen to a lot of people.
14:08 So just relax a little bit, give this guy his chance,
14:12 'cause he's not getting much of one naturally.
14:15 So anyways, let me know your thoughts
14:18 in the comment section on YouTube @MountaineersNow.
14:21 Hit that subscribe button, give us a like as well.
14:24 Follow us on @MountaineersNow as well.
14:27 And we'll be back for maybe some more football talk
14:30 tomorrow here on the show.
14:31 Make sure you tune in and we'll see you guys then.
14:34 Thank you and have a good Monday.
14:36 Take care.
14:36 (upbeat music)
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